Lord Raffles
New member
David jabs his tongue violently into his cheek and nervously repeats my question. 'How long would it take me to turn my back on all the therapy and rehab and abuse a kid again?' he mutters, rocking backwards and forwards in his seat. 'I know exactly how long it would take.'
It is seven years since David sexually abused a child and 18 months since he was released from prison for the second time, in order to live anonymously in the community.
The police officer responsible for David's risk management, Constable Longstaff, has never asked David this question. Earlier, however, she had estimated that it would take at least two to three months for the 33-year-old to first gather the courage and then engineer a situation in which he could attack a child.
Seconds later, we discover the truth. 'It would take me between 30 seconds and a minute,' David says quietly. There is no boastfulness or doubt in his voice. When asked to elaborate, he details his plan. It is completely convincing.
'There is a bridge I cross every day when I come home from the shops. Boys play in the field there. They're the sort who always come up to me, asking for cigarettes. Underneath that bridge it is dark. That's where I'd take them,' he says.
Longstaff briefly closes her eyes in despair. David continues. Now he is almost pleading: 'I'm scared, because if I reoffend I will lose my flat and I don't want to lose my flat. But every day there's a risk I will lose control. I never mean to stop on the bridge but sometimes I find myself watching boys and I don't know how long I've been standing there.'
David has been convicted of numerous indecent assaults on children over the past decades. He was finally imprisoned in 1993 and, after his sentence expired, was placed on the sex offenders' register. In 1999 he reoffended and was returned to prison. When he was released for the second time, he returned to Humberside, where he was born.
But the police continue to have concerns about the level of danger he still represents to the community. They have graded him as being at 'high risk' of reoffending; the second highest category. 'Being considered high risk sounds serious, doesn't it?' Longstaff had said before David arrived at the police station to meet us. 'In reality, it means I spend an hour in his flat every three to six months, chatting to him about what he's been up to. You can't get much information out of these people on these visits. It's only if they choose to talk to you or accidentally let something slip.'
David, however, is one of the more communicative offenders on Longstaff's list. It is chilling how candidly he admits the power his sexual perversions continue to hold over him.
'If I had kids, I would not want someone like me to be out in the community,' he admits. 'I would be afraid and angry if I knew someone like me was living with the freedom I have.'
There is intense public feeling about the process of law that lets paedophiles and other dangerous offenders out into the community after their prison sentences are complete. This widespread paranoia and anxiety explodes into national panic when such people do reoffend. In such a climate, it is almost impossible to have a balanced and open political discussion about how these people should be managed.
This was why Humberside agreed to give The Observer exclusive and unique access to the heart of the multi-agency public protection arrangements, or Mappa. Under Mappa, every violent and sexual offender has his or her panel of experts. Ranging from police, probation and social services to housing and health experts, these panels decide how offenders should be supervised and managed in the community.
Humberside not only has the highest proportion of registered sex offenders in the country; it was also the region that came under severe criticism for the handling of intelligence regarding Ian Huntley, who went on to murder 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
For two weeks The Observer attended panel meetings usually barred to journalists and the public, at which all the agencies openly discussed their fears about the risks posed by offenders living locally and drew up action plans that gave the public as much protection as possible.
We watched as senior officials worked together, deciding every detail of the lives of offenders living in their area. Where should they live, for example - how near to the schools, parks and playgrounds? What jobs could they take? And what - if anything - should landlords, neighbours and employers be told about their past? We were privy to discussions at which experts revealed their belief that specific offenders were in danger of reoffending.
The dilemmas faced by the public protection team were chilling: what should be done about the paedophile who has completed his prison sentence but is showing signs of returning to his offending behaviour? What about the sex offender whose behaviour is becoming increasingly unreliable but who is still on licence? Delaying his recall for a moment too long could mean the murder of another child. But returning him to custody unnecessarily is not just an abuse of his human rights but highly expensive and damaging to any hopes of eventual rehabilitation.
In another case, panel members struggled to decide what to do about the violent offender with mental health problems and a history of knife attacks, whose parents had recently given him a samurai sword. Medical experts monitoring his behaviour said that, if he continued taking his medication, he was a risk to no one. But if he stopped taking his pills, he could be a severe danger to the public.
In yet another case, the experts tried to decide what should be done about the offender about to be released from prison, who had asked to be sent on an £80,000, year-long, residential therapy course. This man, said his probation officer, continued to represent a high risk to the public. She argued strongly that he should be sent on the course, which would delay his return to the community and place him under constant supervision. But health experts on the panel were less convinced: the course was expensive and had only a limited chance of successfully rehabilitating the offender, they argued. For the same money they could fund a year's treatment for three people with Alzheimer's. Why, they asked, should this offender's needs be given priority?
Perhaps the most astonishing experiences were the conversations we had with the offenders themselves. We asked how successful they felt this multi-agency approach was at preventing them reoffending.
Their replies were often terrifying.
James is one offender who was recently identified as being on the cusp of reoffending. He was convicted of abusing children in 1972 and has been in and out of prison ever since. He is now monitored by Police Constable Jeff Smith, with whom he has a close, if tense, relationship.
'I have had these feelings since I was 12 years old,' admitted James. 'Over the years I have developed a pattern. I make friends with lonely single mothers or older people who look after their grandchildren and who either need help or are just friendly people.'
Smith recently discovered that he had yet again begun the process of grooming a family to gain access to a girl. The policeman moved quickly. The family was warned to break all contact with him, and Smith raised James's risk category, meaning his contact with the offender was increased.
'I am glad someone saw what I was doing and reported me,' James said. 'I didn't start off intentionally grooming that family but I can see now that I was building up towards that.
'I can't say that I'll never reoffend again,' he added. 'I'm like this and I can't help it. It's not an addiction; it's how I am. It's just a case of remembering what I was told on the rehabilitation courses I have done in prison.'
Mappa was set up by the Home Office in 2001 to build on good practice and to counter the professional suspicion that existed in some areas between police, probation and social workers. The lack of co-ordination between services created a stand-off that had left many offenders free from effective supervision, enabling them to slip through the net and reoffend.
Instead of operating in isolation, Mappa panel members were instructed to work together to assess and deal with the risks posed by the most dangerous and violent offenders living in the community, pooling intelligence and skills. It is difficult and expensive work: the panels must decode the chaotic and unpredictable lives led by the most dangerous people in their communities. They must anticipate and identify often minute changes in their lives that could tip the balance in these people's behaviour and trigger a fresh offence.
Inevitably, mistakes do happen. It was not long after Christmas two years ago that Peter Voisey snatched a six-year-old girl in north Tyneside from her bath and raped her, although he was supposed to have been monitored in the community.
More recently, the family of a three-year-old girl abducted and raped by Craig Sweeney were left asking how details of his behaviour had not been shared between agencies in Gwent and Avon and Somerset.
Some of those tragedies were caused by failures and mistakes from which lessons could be - and were - learnt but, as John Godley, Mappa co-ordinator for the Humberside area pointed out, the system is beset by other problems that are less easily solved.
'Managing these people is not as straightforward as the public like to think,' he said. 'When a criminal reoffends, the public cry out that those charged with managing them should have anticipated it and stopped it before it happened.
'But although the public protection system is vastly better than it was, it is still not perfect,' he admitted.
The public, said Godley, assume that there are a few violent and sex offenders in any community and many agencies able to supervise their behaviour. 'In reality,' he said, 'it is absolutely the other way round.'
According to Visor, the violent and sex offenders' register, there are 860 individuals who pose a significant risk to the public in Humberside, and 306 others who are no longer on the sexual offences register but are still listed on Visor.
Humberside has the highest proportion of registered sex offenders in the country: 81 for every 100,000 of the population. Nationally, there are 45,737 live cases on Visor and 10,861 others not being actively managed.
The level of management and supervision offenders receive can be well over minimum levels but, said Godley: 'The simple, if disturbing, truth is that no region in the country has a bottomless pit of staff and resources.'
Home Office research showing the probability of sex and violent offenders reoffending is terrifying. Offenders believed to be 'very high risk' have more than a 90 per cent chance of recidivism. Around half of all high-risk offenders will reoffend, and up to a third of medium-risk offenders will commit another crime.
It is hard for any system to triumph over such entrenched offending behaviour but the level of supervision of sex offenders, set nationally, seems astonishing to an outside observer. While Humberside has one exceptional case where an offender is being visited three times a day by three separate agencies, other offenders are monitored at the minimum level suitable to their level of risk as set by national guidance.
Under minimum standards, registered sex offenders considered to be low-risk are visited by a police officer once a year, while medium-risk offenders are seen every six to nine months. High-risk offenders, like David, receive visits once every three to six months. Those deemed to be at very high risk of reoffending are visited once every three months.
'With lots of these men, we can all see that, slowly but surely, they're back on a path to reoffending,' admitted Longstaff. 'All we can do is hope that we're around at the specific moment they do something concrete enough to recall them to jail.
'The truth is that I would not want the public to realise exactly how little I can do in law,' she added. 'Some of these offenders have done things so horrible and dangerous that, if the public knew they were out and walking round the streets, there would be uproar.'
Despite the risks and difficulties, however, Mappa does seem to be working. According to the most recent figures from the Home Office, there are now almost 30,000 offenders on the national sex offenders' register - or an increase of 4 per cent on the year before. Yet in 2005 just 250 serious crimes were committed by offenders in the programme.
An idea of how many crimes were anticipated and prevented can be gleaned from the fact that 1,640 of the 13,783 offenders in the two most serious categories of risk were found to have breached their licences or Sexual Offences Protection Order, both of which impose conditions on offenders, such as staying away from playgrounds or schools. All were returned to custody immediately.
The risk of a criminal reoffending haunts those whose job it is to minimise all risks. In another exclusive piece of access, The Observer attended a training day for the most senior probation officers in Humberside.
'I find it hard to contain the sheer disgust, fear and revulsion I feel towards these men,' said one officer. 'I feel repulsion towards them. I feel hatred.'
John Godley, who carried out the training, says that, although these feelings may not be politically correct, it is healthy to acknowledge them. Another officer said: 'If you don't privately admit the feelings you have when working with, for example, someone who has raped a two-year-old, you can't deal with them professionally in public.' The need to control such feelings is central to the success of the parole officer. It is only by getting close enough to the offender to gain their trust that the layers of fantasy and worrying behaviour can be laid bare.
While hoping that offenders do learn a degree of self-control from rehabilitation courses and therapy, many feel that the only way these people can be properly monitored in the community is by putting them under 24-hour surveillance.
But this is not the catch-all solution it appears. 'If I asked for 24-hour surveillance for half the people I thought deserved it, I would be told I wasn't doing my job properly because I wasn't being realistic about the protection we can offer the public,' said Longstaff. 'And they'd be right to say that: you need dozens of officers to keep a round-the-clock on an individual. You tell me how we can afford to pay for that.'
Experts have other complaints about the limits of their power: case managers have no legal right of entry into the house of an offender, for example. 'If I go round to talk to an offender in his home, he can refuse to let me in and there's nothing I can do about it,' explained Longstaff.
'We also need greater sentences for sex offenders. You can get life for rape, but virtually no one ever does.' Even the other so-called 'solution' to the problem of violent and sexual offenders in the community, - the naming and shaming known as 'Sarah's Law' - creates deep divides among professionals. 'From the parents' and public's point of view, I see why Sarah's Law seems so attractive,' said one police officer. 'If we lived in a nation where we could trust people to use the information sensibly, I would support its introduction. But the truth is that we have a significant minority who would use that information to attack offenders, which would drive them underground. That would be the worst thing: at least if we know where these people are and they trust us enough to talk to us, we have a chance of stopping them reoffending.'
Detective Chief Superintendent Gavin Baggs, Humberside Police head of CID, is candid about the likelihood of ever creating entirely safe communities for our children to grow up in. 'The public have to accept there is no such thing as a completely risk-free environment,' he said. 'The truth is that we, as a nation, are not prepared to accept the constraints on all our lives that would require.'
Baggs points to the furore sparked by the reported decision of some schools to ban parents taking photographs of children during plays and sporting events. 'There is a risk that some of those photos will be being taken for the wrong reasons, but it's a such a small risk,' he said. 'But where do you stop? Where do you draw the line?'
Even if the public did decide that the risks to their children were so high that it was acceptable to lock up everyone even suspected of having the potential to commit a violent offence, or if they agreed to pay the taxes necessary for their 24-hour surveillance, the safety of our children is not guaranteed.
Statistics show that we should be less worried about offenders we know about and monitor and more concerned by those others - neighbours, uncles and friends we have grown to trust - who have never been convicted of a crime.
'The public would not stand for the level of Big Brother controls that would be necessary to stop all offenders, both known and unknown,' said Angela Montgomery, senior manager for risk and child protection at Humberside probation service. 'We have to get the message across that we're not going to eradicate risk, no matter how hard we work. The public need to realise that sex offenders will always exist. There will always be a risk that you live next to one, or have one in your family. Society needs to be more mature and take responsibility for the reality of the world we live in.'
Names of sex offenders have been changed.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,1984490,00.html
